Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan College have created a brand new means of telling “aged” human cells aside from youthful ones utilizing electrical fields. Whereas key markers have been discovered for these “senescent” cells, present strategies require biochemical “labels” that are tough to use and have an effect on the cells themselves, making them tough to review. The brand new methodology is label-free and fewer damaging. The crew goals to diversify the strategy, extending it to different cell sorts.
Ageing begins on the mobile degree. As we become older, aged or “senescent” cells accumulate in our physique. Not solely have these cells misplaced a lot of their unique perform, however they proceed to emit compounds which set off irritation. There’s a rising physique of proof for the way they play an element in ageing-related situations like arterial hardening, Alzheimer’s illness, and sort 2 diabetes.
To grasp and deal with such illnesses, scientists want to come back to grips with how senescent cells have an effect on our physiology. Naturally, this begins with figuring out which of our cells are senescent, and which aren’t. Sadly, present strategies depend on selective “labeling,” e.g. the attachment of a fluorescent molecule to particular compounds recognized to be current in aged cells. Not solely is that this time-consuming and complicated, however the course of itself can change the properties of the very factor scientists wish to examine.
To get round this concern, a crew led by Assistant Professor Ippei Yagi from Tokyo Metropolitan College has provide you with a wholly totally different method to figuring out senescent cells. As a substitute of chemical labels, they put cells underneath an alternating electrical subject. This causes a slight rearrangement of cost, the place one finish of the cell is extra positively charged than the opposite. When the electrical subject just isn’t uniform over house, the cell migrates; within the case of an alternating subject, the cell wanders backwards and forwards between the electrodes. Because the frequency of the sphere is modified, the movement of the cell modifications considerably at a worth generally known as the cutoff frequency. The strategy, generally known as frequency-modulated dielectrophoresis (FM-DEP), goals to characterize cell kind by measuring this worth.
The crew targeted their efforts on human dermal fibroblasts, an necessary a part of connective tissue within the pores and skin. Once they examined senescent cells towards youthful ones, they discovered that there was a marked distinction of their cutoff frequencies. These modifications come about from modifications within the fatty (lipid) molecules which make up the membrane of the cells. Importantly, FM-DEP is speedy, simple to use, and label-free.
The brand new methodology just isn’t solely a handy instrument for analysis into ageing, however may even see software to regenerative drugs, and drug screening. The crew hope to use FM-DEP to different cell sorts as nicely, as a flexible new method to cell identification.
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP23K28453 and JP23KK0260.
Supply:
Tokyo Metropolitan College
Journal reference:
Yagi, I., et al. (2025). Label-free Detection of Senescence-like State in Human Dermal Fibroblasts by way of Frequency-Modulated Dielectrophoresis. IEEE Sensors Journal. doi.org/10.1109/jsen.2025.3576789.
